Pick-and-place machines (hereinafter “PNP”) for positioning components onto a circuit board have been used for many years. In one such system, a robotic transport arm has a vacuum line and a nozzle at the end that lifts components from a supply station and delivers them to a specific location on a circuit board. To achieve this step, the individual component must have a top surface that will form a vacuum seal with the nozzle tip. Components that have through holes (“apertured components”), such as internally threaded fasteners, present a problem since the hole in their top surface is not conducive to drawing a vacuum by a standard nozzle tip. Nozzle tips cannot be custom designed for each different part because many differently-shaped components must be delivered by the same nozzle to the same circuit board in sequence.
To solve this problem, it is known to add a piece of adhesive tape to the top of the apertured component to seal off the hole. The tape creates a uniform planar surface with which the nozzle tip can sufficiently vacuum seal so that component can be lifted. However, this solution is not ideal since it requires an additional sacrificial element be applied to the apertured component and then later removed. Applying tape adds cost, slows production rates and creates used tape scrap. It is therefore desirable to provide the electronics industry an automated assembly means that can efficiently handle apertured components using standard PNP equipment.